Thursday, December 21, 2017

Ode To A Husband

I could bemoan how I went from a seemingly fixable issue to a surprise, unfixable, chronic one. Or how I thought so many times that I just didn't want to live life anymore this way, being trapped inside my body.

But what I really want to talk about is marriage...and my husband. The guy who jumped into this mess with me and who somehow hasn't felt the need to climb out.

This is a guy who listens to me cry, who rubs my back when I'm in pain, who gives me hugs when I need them most.

A guy who has reassured me probably a thousand times that the doctors will get me better. That I'll come out the other side. That I'm not dying and that I'll have a good life after all.

A marriage is something so many people don't know how to do. When you marry someone, you promise to stand by their side even when the standing isn't fun. Sometimes the earth beneath you turns to muck, and you're holding hands and sinking down together.

A real husband is a man who stands by his wife. Who looks at her with love even as she stares blankly into the mirror, wondering what happened to her former self. Who still loves her on the days she feels the worst and doesn't have much to give. Who never turns away, even when she isn't so lovable all of the time.

A husband - a man - doesn't bail when things get hard. He shoulders himself, puts on his armor, and turns to face things head on.

My husband is the best man in the world. I couldn't do this without him and I can't ever find the words to explain how he keeps me afloat. But sometimes, I still try.

This is one of those times.

I love you, my husband. Thank you for loving me.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Writing Is...Me, Medicine, Mattering

For the past couple of years I've been living in survival mode, which means I've done whatever I've had to do to make money. And that translated to giving up my copywriting work and mostly focusing on website administration and project management, with the occasional repetitive writing project thrown in.

I've been miserable Monday through Friday for a long time (2 1/2 years?). But then my entire life has been miserable since August 2015 so it didn't really stand out all that much. At least not until recently.

As I've started to pull out of the worst of my health lows, I've started to see the unhappiness more clearly and also find motivation to make changes to my work life. And with the hopes that the medical bills start decreasing next year and that somehow everything will be ok if I walk away, that's what I've recently taken a leap of faith to do.

As soon as I made that decision, random people started popping up out of nowhere - almost as if they were summoned. One of those was an ad agency I used to write for a couple of years ago before I got sick. They suddenly had a new project for me after years of copywriting and content drought.

I've also done a successful trial project for a second ad agency that works with nonprofits, I'm in the freelance pool for a third ad agency in Austin that focuses on IT, and I'm in talks to do ongoing work for a digestive health physician group in 2018.

Thank you, universe.

I sat down yesterday morning to write some copy for one of those agencies. It was only a few hours of work but it was like sipping an antidote. It brightened my world. It gave me meaning. It made me happy and I felt useful.

Now this didn't make my day perfect but it sure made it better than some of the days I've had recently. It also acted as a catalyst, because then I went and wrote another article on LinkedIn, which I published yesterday afternoon.

I'm back to the drudgery today but I am keenly aware that the timeline is finite. I've got less than two months left working with this client and then I'm free to be me again. Free to be a writer again. Free to be happier in my days and to have my talents utilized.

I am extraordinarily grateful that enough people have expressed interest in my work that I can continue to make my living as a writer. To be a working writer in any fashion is sort of like acting or singing professionally - so many want to do it, but very few can.

For many years I believed that my writing was not really writing at all. When I spent week after week drafting 1000 page manuals for computer software, I didn't think it counted. When I moved on to marketing communications and wrote white papers and website copy, I classified it as business. When I designed training manuals and created onboarding programs with written materials, I considered it just another job to do.

But it's all writing. The fact is, I'm a writer and I have been since I was 23 years old. Since that first job out of college redoing a PeopleSoft manual, which has sprouted into a long career that I hope will culminate in some books (under this pen name) and a lot more copywriting success (under my real one).

Writing is medicine for me, sometimes. It is my only talent aside from being an animal whisperer and an empath, and when I get to use my skills I think I feel like I matter in the world. I need more days of feeling like I matter, and I think they are coming soon.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Sitting In My Closet

I find that my closet is the default place I go to when I'm upset. I would say that I don't know why, because it's sort of an odd place to go, but I do know why.

Years ago when I was going through a painful divorce, I had a young child in the house with me who I didn't want to expose to adult problems. So I used to go lay on the floor in the master closet and cry, because it was the most removed place in the house and I felt like it was insulated by the most walls. It seemed the best chance for him not to hear me.

Almost 12 years later, when I'm having an "I just want to die" sort of day or moment, you'll find me in the closet. I wish I'd picked a different location to latch onto, because it's not the most comfortable place in the world. The floor is carpeted but it's hard. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's hot. Usually I'm surrounded by shoes and dirty laundry, which is no big deal except when you live with a man who works out. But still I go in there because I've trained myself that this the place where I can land when I'm falling through life.

Yesterday I went to my closet so that I could write, which I've never done before. When I write I need to feel like nobody will interrupt me. I need to be able to detach from my body, in a way, so that the stuff that's being channeled through me can actually get onto the screen before it evaporates. And when someone is in the room with you, which my husband is a lot now that he works from home too, it's just hard. Not all the time, but sometimes.

So my thought yesterday was that I'd go shut myself in the closet, which is in the bathroom. Because generally when a person goes into a bathroom they expect that nobody else is going to try to barge in. I mean it's kind of an unwritten rule, right? And so I sat on the floor with my laptop and tapped out an 1800 word essay, which was rather good I think but that culminated in the ultimate backache.

I guess sometimes we just have to do what we have to do, and that was what I had to do yesterday. I feel like that essay was a lot less craptastic than the one I wrote last week, and I'm satisfied about that. But I still have more to do. Lots more to do.

Hopefully next time I can find a spot that is a little more kind to my back and butt.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Craptastic. But Maybe Not.

I wrote an essay a couple of days ago because I wanted to get something written. Because I wanted to make some progress. Because I wanted to feel like I was still moving forward on some life purpose despite the tornado that has been my life for the last week.

And when I was done writing that essay, I labeled it "craptastic" in my brain. And on social media, so you know, it's official.

I've written before about how you should just write and try to withhold judgment until later. I've been doing pretty well with taking my own advice, although maybe I'm still judging if I'm giving my writing a "craptastic" label but then also agreeing with myself that I will read it at a later date (and decide what it actually is then).

I opened a file about two weeks ago for a fiction book I'd started working on in 2016. This was after I'd emerged from my two major surgeries and made up my mind to no longer waste my life. I'd gotten an outline down on paper, and a character list, and a setting, and various possible scenes. And then I started creating this new world in my Word document over the course of maybe two weeks.

And then I quit. I remember this vividly.

I was cradled in my love seat, trying to create a story but watching my fingers grind to a halt. And I remember sort of throwing my arms up in frustration and self-loathing.

"This sucks! I can't do this! I can't think of anything to write about, ever! Why am I even trying?!"

I closed the file and slammed the laptop shut, cried to my husband about how I can't ever seem to write, and I decided then and there that I would never write fiction. Never, not ever. The end. Forever and ever amen.

And that was that, for literally a year and a half.

A couple of weeks ago I got this weird itch to take a look and maybe see what was left. So I opened the file and started reading, mostly to see where I'd left off and maybe figure out if I might be able to make it go again. And I wasn't very far along when I sort of got lost in the world I had created. Like I was reading someone else's book.

And I kept telling myself, wow this is fantastic writing. It couldn't be mine. How is this mine? Really? This is mine? No.

I thumbed through my notes, which I also hadn't looked at in a year and a half, and was able to add about 500 words to that draft before sort of petering out again. At which point I started getting sucked back into the negativity with thoughts like: How can I possibly write anything else that good? How can I repeat what I did in those first 4000 words? How can I stretch this level of writing into a book? I can't. I just can't.

And then I walked away.

I've thought about that manuscript a lot since then, because I realized that it's the polar opposite of what I'd decided it was in 2016. And therefore I have arrived at the thesis for this blog: craptastic is maybe not craptastic. Maybe it's really not that bad. Maybe it's quite good. Maybe it's excellent, in fact.

I believe I am doing myself a disservice if I don't write at all because I always think it's terrible. Because there are times when I come back around and find that I was all wrong about myself. So I'm glad I wrote that craptastic essay the other day and I hope I can write another one soon. And then another, and another. And before I know it maybe I'll have a book worth reading.

Maybe. In 2018. That's my goal.